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- AN ADDRESS 

BY REV. T. DE WITT TALM AGE, D.I). 
Jlclibcrcb nt % JKfo ^Theological Stmhtmg, Utolfaim, ;l. J., 
Wednesday, March 3, 1875 

PHOMOGRAttllCAUfV KEI'OKTKU DV WILLIAM ANDIiKSON. 



NEW YORK: 
NELSON & T II I LEI PS. 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK A WAl.DKN. 

•JJP/M V-I"'H"'»I. l'b)*A IITMKNT. 




y 



H 1 



MAR lit) 1928 



Aniarkan University 



PREACHING TO THE MASSES. 



Young Gentlemen of Drew Theological Seminary : 
I am very glad to meet you to-night, and bring a mes- 
sage from the outside world and the outside Church to you 
who will soon cuter upon the grandest work that a man 
ever does, that of preaching the glorious Gospel of the 
Sou of God to a ruined and dying world. 

I know the impression is abroad among young people 
that the professions and occupations of life are all crowded, 
that there is hardly any room left ; and that if men get into 
any useful position in the Church or in the world it will 
he by a hard and tremendous push. There never was a 
greater mistake than that. There never was so much 
room in all the secular occupations as there is to-day for 
honest, hard-working, energetic, right-principled men ; 
and, certainly, there never was so great a demand for min- 
isters of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fields are open on 
every side; they are white to the harvest; all we want is 
husbandmen and sickles. 

AVc who are in the ministry toil against fearful odds. 
When we sec, day by day, coming against the Church of 
Jesus Christ an embattled host of iniquity, and there are 
only a few preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ compared 
with the vast multitude of men who are lighting against. 
God and tbe truth, we look with great interest upon our 
theological seminaries, and pray for them day by day, that 
there may come forth from them whole battalions of young 
men full of the love of Jesus Christ, and with a determi- 
nation to do God's will at all hazards. 



I 



Preaching to the Masses. 



J have been asked to-night to speak about preaching the 
Gospel to the masses. The question is, " Who are the 
masses?" Suppose there be a village of five thousand 
people ; the masses would compose lour thousand five hun- 
dred of them. Suppose there be a city of five hundred 
thousand people ; four hundred and fifty thousand, at any 
rate, belong to what we call "the masses." The people 
who do not belong to this class are the exception ; they 
are men who, through vast accumulations of wealth or 
through unusual culture of mind, are set apart from other 
people in the community. What I understand by the 
word " masses" is, " the most of folks." Well, now it is a 
"^^v^seltled fact that the great majority of people in our cities 
clovuot come under religious influence. There are fifty 
thousaniloeople in Edinburgh who receive not the Gospel ; 
there are ohwjiundred thousand in Glasgow who come 
not under Christian influences; there are three hundred 
thousand people in the city of Brooklyn who are not 
touched by the Churches; there are at least five or six 
hundred thousand people in the city of New York who 
are no more interested in the Church of the Lord Jesus 
than if they had never heard of a Church. And the great 
and growing question of to-day is, "flow shall we bring 
these people in contact with the great heart of Christ?" 

We talk about large churches and large audiences. 
The largest audiences are not in the churches; they are in 
the temples of sin. The tears of unutterable woe are 
their baptism ; the blood of crushed hearts is the wine 
of their awful sacrament ; blasphemies their litany ; the 
groans of a lost world the organ-dirge of their worship. A 
vast multitude outside the kingdom of God are untouched. 
We do not come within five thousand miles of reaching 
them. We talk about people living four, live, or six blocks 
from a church. There" ure in our great cities those who 



Preaching to thk Masses. 



5 



practically live thousands of miles from any church. A 
great many people suppose that the Gospel is a s<-rt of 
"swamp-angel gun," with which yon can stand away off 
and shoot six miles. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a 
sword ; you have to clutch it in your right hand and go 
down where men are and strike right and left, slaying 
their sorrows and their sins. We must go down where the 
people arc. If the Lord Jesus Christ had stood in the 
door of heaven inviting a lost world, would the world have 
come? No, no! Jesus Christ came down, and amid the 
sorrows, the sins, and the sufferings c .f the world, invited 
men up to something better. 

majority of the people in our 
cities is illustrated by a lad who stood at the gate of one 
of our parks sometime ago. A minister of Jesus Christ 
was passing along, and said : " You seem to be poorly off. 
Do you go to Sabbath-school ? " " No." Do you go to 
church ? " " No." " You ought to be a good boy."" lie 
answered : " We poor chaps aint got no chance." That just 
expresses the condition, the desolation, the moral bank- 
ruptcy of a great multit ude of people scattered all through 
the towns, villages, and cities of this country. The great 
suffering class in this day is the middle class. Go into 
the cities and larger towns and you find the rich and the 
poor. The rich can go anywhere they please; they can 
get any kind of religious influence they please ; they can 
pay large pew rentals ; they can move in brilliant BOCioty, 
and if they do not like one church they can go to another.' 
They are not the suffering class. For the miserably poor, 
as they are called, there aro mission-schools established,' 
and these people, who are the very dregs of society, or so 
called, may be gathered up into these mission -schools. 
Bnt how about the middle classes ? and what do 1 moan 
by the middle classes? I mean the men who have I . > 



Preaching to tiik Masses. 



tug to get a living, who make a thousand dollars a year 
and spend a thousand, or who make two thousand and 
spend two thousand dollars a year of their income. That 
is the history of a vast majority of the people both in the 
country and in the city. The vast majority of people 
have no worldly surplus at the end of the year. These 
arc the men who do not get the Gospel ; these are really 
the suffering classes. They cannot go to the high-rented 
pew church ; they cannot seek out the brilliant sphere 
in which they would like to move, and they are too 
proud to go down into the mission-schools, and so they 
get no kind of religious influence. 

This great mass outside the Church of Jesus Christ need 
4p he brought in. They have their sorrows and their 
truTh^they have their dead children in their houses; they 
have their sicknesses. Why is it that they are not brought 
to Christ ! wny- 13 it not now, as it was when the Lord 
Jesus was upon earth and he went through the streets, 
and the people brought out their palsied and leprous? 
We have just as much suffering now as there was then, 
and far more; for the population of the world is so much 
increased. Why is it that the masses of the people do not 
bring out their suffering ones to Jesus Christ? Why don't 
mothers bring their little ones, and say: "Lord Jesus, if 
thou canst not bless me, bless my child ; and if thou canst 
not bless this one that is well, bless this poor little crippled 
one; let thy mercy fall on him." 

I thought to-night I would mention three or four rea- 
sons why the masses are not reached, and then give you 
some brotherly advice as to how you may be qualified to 
reach them. 

The first reason of failure is, intense (lenominationalism. 
The world watches, and thinks we want to make them all 
Methodists, or all Presbyterians, or all Episcopalians. 



Preaching to the Masses. 



7 



There is an intense denominatiouaiism abroad in the 
Church of Jesus Christ. There are too many who cannot 
look over the wall of their own particular denomination. 
1 believe that every denomination ought to look after its 
own interests, and that the fences ought to be kept up 
between the denominations ; but in every fence there ought 
to be a gate that might swing open, or bars that, you 
might let down. Do you not know that there are in all 
our different denominations men who set before the world 
the idea that they want their own particular denomina- 
tion especially advanced? and in that intense desire the 
world stands back and says: " Why, they are not so much 
after 1113' own >o\\\ as they are after the advancement of their 
own particular sect." There was in Brooklyn a minister 
who publicly declared that he would rather be a pooiv^es- 
byterian than a good anything else. Now 1 sllO^Prrtther 
be a good anything else than a poor Presbyterian. 

The papers that have within a lew days come from Lon- 
don tell us there has been violent sectarian discussion. 
Rev. Dr. Parker invited .Mr. Freeman tie to preach in his 
church in London, and lo ! an interdict goes forth forbid- 
ding him to preach. Mr. Frecmantle dares not enter the 
pulpit, but goes below and explains why he cannot preach 
in the church of a dissenter. 

Now wc need to show the world that we have a desil'O 
dominant over all sectarianism, and thai our first desire 
is to bring the people into the kingdom of our Lord Jo- 
sns Christ, whether they join our Church or some other 
Church. I have no sympathy with this intense denom 
i nationalism. Perhaps one reason for it is that 1 WHS 
born somewhere near the line that separates the denom- 
inations of Christians. My father has been dead now 
some years. He never knew in this world whether he 
was ti Bubhipsarian or a hiiprahipsariiin, and I do not be- 



8 



Preaching to the Masses. 



lieve he has found out since. One summer, when I was 
off on my vacation, I took the sacrament one Sabbath in a 
Methodist chinch, the very next Sabbath in a Presbyte- 
rian church, and the very next Sabbath in an Episcopalian 
church, and I could not tell which service I enjoyed the 
most. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Christ, one 
doxology, one heaven ! The time must come when all 
the people belonging to the kingdom of Christ, of all 
names and denominations, can join hands around the 
cross and recite the creed. " I believe in God the Father 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, 
and in the communion of saints." But depend upon it, 
as long as the masses of the people outside have an idea 
"^that we are chiefly anxious to have our own sect and de- 
nomination prospered and dominant they will not come in. 

Another reason why the masses have not yet been 
reached is because we have adhered too much to the con- 
ventionalitics and severe proprieties of the Church. Take 
the matter of church architecture. For the most part the 
churches in this country are not so attractive as the halls 
and the theaters. By a natural law, it seems to me that 
all audiences ought to be gathered as around a great fire- 
place, in a semicircular form of architecture. Then, 
instead of seeing simply the back of a man's head, which is 
the most uninteresting part of him, you sec his face or his 
side face. When there is a half-circle form there is a law 
of sympathy flowing through from heart to heart that you 
cannot get in an angular church, While other buildings 
have been comparatively well ventilated, churches have 
been but poorly ventilated; while other edifices have been 
brilliantly lighted, churches were but dimly lighted. 
Christianity sits shivering in Gothic churches, and religion 
is laid out in state. Let jevery Church committee that is 
going to put up a building resolve to have a church just 



Breaching to the Masses. 



9 



to suit themselves, regardless of stereotyped notions. This 
disposition from generation to generation to stick to the 
angular kind of church has hindered the kingdom of God 
mightily among the masses. The people outside who have 
not been brought up to go to church will not go into a 
building which is unsympathetic and cold. 

We have been attempting, also, to adhere too much to 
conventionalities in the item of preaching. The question 
is, " How do others preach ?" Then we must preach just us 
they do. If we cannot save the world in our way we wont 
have it saved at all. Let the twelve hundred millions of 
the race die, but do not spoil our patent leathers ! We 
have no right to be stopping to consider how others do the 
work. The question is, " How does God want us to doiittf 
work?" But the mere conventionalities and so^vfe pro- 
prieties of the Church of God have kept hae>'{he people. 
To us who have been brought up in Christian families, and 
have been taught all our days to go to church, and to 
whom going to church is natural, it does not make so 
much difference what is said, or the way ii i- -aid— we 
will go to church anyhow. But those people who come 
in from the outside, who have no proclivities toward the 
Church of Jesus Christ, if they .-it down and find every 
thing is cold, conventional, formal, and on stilts, they will 
not come a second time. So, I think, the Gospel has been 
kept back from the masses because we have been such 
sticklers for the mere technicalities of religion. I think 
it is very important that we have all the definitions of re 
ligion, and that, in our own mind, we have the technical 
ities; but we never must bring them before the people. 
Wo must come in the plain vernacular, or they will not 
receive or understand us. I do not think there is any thing 
DlOrC important than that the young man going out of a 
theological seminary tJiouh) have all the definitions of faith, 



LO 



Preaching to the Masses. 



repentance, adoption, and sanctification in his mind. 
There are those men who think they are orthodox when 
they are not ; they simply do not know what are the grand 
definitions of religion. 

But while every young man going into the ministry 
ought to he familiar with " theological terms," he must 
not employ them before the people. After we get into 
the ministry we spend the first ten years in letting the 
people hear how much we know ; we spend the next ten 
years in getting them to know as much as we do; and the 
next ten in finding out that none of us know any thing as 
we ought. It is always a failure when a man in any de- 
partment carries his technicalities into business. What 
would you think of a physician who should go among the 
people and talk about the " pericardium," or the " inter- 
costal muscles," or "scorbutic symptoms." He would 
scare a man to- death. A man would be as much con- 
founded as the one who was studying up the case of his 
wife who was ill. He prided himself on doing every thing 
by the book. He had a book upon practical medicine, 
lie was talking with his neighbors, and said he had been 
reading his wife's case up, and, as far as he could tell by 
the book, she was threatened with a diuynosis, and if she 
got that it would certainly kill her! Away with all your 
technicalities. If you want to bring the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ to the masses do not talk about " complutensian 
edition," "hypostatic union," "French encyclopedism," 
" Era6tianism," and "the eucharist." They would not 
listen ten minutes to it. 

If you talked about these things you would see the peo- 
ple take their huts and clear out. When you come into 
the ministry there will sit before you hundreds of sinning, 
Buffering, struggling, dying people. They come in hungry 
for the bread of life; they want to know |*OW to be saved; 



Preaching to the Masses. 



11 



they are fully persuaded that this world is a cheat, and 
cannot satisfy their immortal nature. There will be hun- 
dreds of people in the audience who do not care about 
your definitions. Give them something practical from the 
Bible and from your own heart, and they will take it ; and 
they will not take it in any other way. Suppose when you 
get into the ministry you rise and preach an orthodox ser- 
mon on justification, and you say, in the words of a learned 
divine of the past century, whose definition I copied, lor I 
could not remember it: "Justification is purely a forensic 
act, the act of a judge sitting in the forum in which the 
supreme ruler and judge, who is accountable to none, who 
alone knows the manner in which the ends of his univers- 
al government can best be attained, reckons that whijh 
was done by the substitute in the same manner as iiWf had. 
been done by those who believe in the subsjjwfe, ami not 
on account of any thing done by them, but purely on ac- 
count of this gracious method of reckoning, grants them 
the full remission of their sins." Now, can any of you 
tell what justification is? A man would want a directory 
to find his way out of church after hearing that. While 
this definition of justification may be most excellent, I 
should rather tell the people, " Justification is this: you 
trust in Christ and God will let you oil'." 

I had in my first charge an Irish girl, who came to my 
house one Friday afternoon and said, " I would like to join 
the Church to-morrow evening." I said, "Bridget, do you 
think you are ready to come in?" She replied, " 1 think 
I am." " Well now," said I, "you come to-morrow night 
to the meeting of Church ollicers and we will talk it over, 
and if you are- ready we will bo vory glad to have you." 
So on Saturday night she came. I put a few plain ami 
simple questions to her, and she answered them all Batifl 
factorily, whereupon a very good man in the consistory 



12 



Preaching to tiik Masses. 



(for then I was in the Reformed Dutch Church) said, 
"Bridget, bow many covenants are there?" Well, she 
burst out crying. Of course 6he could not answer. The 
good Scotchman who asked the question shook Mb head, 
as much as to say "I don't hardly think she is ready to 
come." Well, I said I would like to ask that question all 
around of the consistory to see how many could tell how 
many covenants there are, and what they are. Then I 
said, " Bridget, do you love the Lord Jesus Christ ? " " Yes, 
I do." "Are you sure you love him?" "Yes, I am." 
" flow do they treat you up in that place where you are 
now since you became a Christian?" "They treat me 
very badly because I have become a Christian, and they 
liMigh at me a great deal." " How do you feel when they 
laugh and scoff at you?" "I feel very 6orry for them, 
audi pray for them." I said, "I think that will do." 
She was just as lit to come into the Church as any man in 
all that consistory. She did not know how many cove- 
nants there are, but she knew Christ. 

Another reason why we do not succeed in bringing the 
masses into the kingdom of God is because of a real lack 
of sijinpathy for Oicm. We pride ourselves in the number 
of line carriages that stop in front of the church, in the 
number of fine silk dresses that trail through the aisle, in 
the exquisite music that rolls out from the organ loft J and 
some plain man, with worn-out hat and worn-out coat, 
comes into the front door of the church on the Sabbath 
day and starts up the aisle, supposing he is in the most 
welcome place in all the world, and figuratively, (not liter- 
ally,) an usher takes him by the collar and says, " Where 
are you going?" "I am going up to take u seat." "This 
is not the place for you ; you ought to go up to the Mis- 
sion chapel." " Whew !. what an atmosphere those com- 
mon people have made hcrel" Then there will come in 



Preaching to the Masses. 



some one in elegant apparel, and there will he two ushers 
to lead such a one to a seat. The masses come up to the 
Church of God and they cannot get in. 

I was in a factory in New England one summer day. 
I came up on the outside, and I did not know what kind 
of a factory it was. I was inquisitive to see. 1 saw on 
the outside of the door, " No admittance." Of course I 
went in. I came to the second door, and I saw over that, 
"No admittance." I went in there, and after passing 
through it I came into the inside. I saw it was a pin 
factory; they were making beautiful pins, and putting 
them up in papers — making great fortunes with pins. I 
thought to myself, that is just the way with some of the 
Churches where the exclusive feeling predominates. Tba* 
masses come on the outside and they see, by reasoi>*5lthe 
conventionalities of the Church, "No admiu>rfee ; " they 
go on to the second door, and there is something in the 
chilling frigidity which says again, "No admittance;" but 
they press on through, out of curiosity, and they get inside, 
and there they find us hammering out our little niceties of. 
religious belief, pounding into shape our little peculiarities 
of theological sentiment— making pins. We seem to act 
as though we were disposed to say to these people who 
come in from the outside, "Why, this is a church for re- 
spectable sinners, for velvet-coated sinners, for sinners with 
a gloss on, and not for such sinners as you. The few peo- 
ple that we get into our Churches are the exceptional cases. 
The Church of God is very much like a hospital, into 
which you might go in the summer lime, after a BOVOre 
battle, anil there lind a thousand patients, and up in i. in- 
comer of the hospital you lind a doctor who is taking cure 
of two or three patients; he is taking very good care of 
them. Yon 6ay, " Doctor, haven't you attended to these 
other cases?" "No," he says; "I huve three interesting 



14 



Pkeaciiing to the Masses. 



eases." "How long have you been here?" "I have 
been here three days ; these are very interesting cases; I 
am keeping the flies off." We have got a few nice cases 
in the Church, very interesting people, indeed. We are 
looking after thein ; but the great, battle-field is outside, and 
thousands and tens of thousands are dying of their wounds, 
and we have not the courage to go out and get them. 

I ask if those thousands outside are not worth more 
than the three or four inside? I know there are a great 
many who think it is not aristocratic to go out and save 
the masses; they arc afraid that they will actually lose 
their caste in society ; they are afraid that in any particu- 
lar Church the masses shall be dominant; but you have 
-many illustrations of the fact that it neither demeans an 
indi vidual nor a Church when he or it goes out to save the 
people. [)iil the aristocracy of England ever have belong- 
ing to it nobler names than those of Lady Huntingdon and 
Lady Frances Hastings ? Did George II. Stuart ever shine 
more brilliantly than he did when, Sabbath after Sabbath, 
he stood in Bedford-street, Philadelphia, one of the lowest 
streets of that city, on a dry -goods box, inviting the peo- 
ple to come and be saved ? Has there been any thing more 
beautiful in the life of that man than when he went down 
into the army in the last war, passing in the night time 
between the ranks, and a sentinel accosted him and said: 
"Haiti advance, give the countersign." Mr. Stuart had 
not the countersign. He said to the sentinel: "All the 
countersign I know is the Lord Jesus Christ J 1 came 
down here in behalf of the Christian Commission." 
"Why," replied the bcntinel, "Mr. Stuart, is that you?" 
"That's me. Where did you ever learn my name?" 
"You taught ine the way to heaven at the mission-school 
in Philadelphia." Was there any demeaning in such a 
process for such a man as George II. Stuart? No; there 



Pkkaciiing to the Masses. 



15 



are two kinds of aristocracy in the world : the one is the 
Lord's aristocracy and the other is the devil's aristocracy. 
George II. Stuart belongs to the first kind. 

These are some reasons why I think we have failed as 
yet to reach the masses. I know it is the ambition of 
nine tenths of the young men who arc sitting before me 
this evening, when the time of their graduation arrives, 
to go forth and preach to the multitude-. In order to do 
that, in the first place you need what I shall call a holy 
recklessness. People know right away whether you are 
afraid of them or not. Men always despise a coward, and 
women hate him worse yet. The masses are quick ob- 
servers, and if you come before them to preach the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ with any kind of apology at all — if yon go 
witn any other feeling than this, "The Lord Jesus Christ 
sends me, and I have a right to preach, and I am going to 
tell these people all I know about Christ," and God, and 
heaven, and the Holy Spirit has promised to be with me" 
— yon will utterly fail. 

Mark this: there is a judgment-seat in every man's 
heart. Now the idea is abroad that in order to have an 
audience, especially in the cities, you must preach huinan- 
itarianism, or you must preach the doctrine of development, 
or you must hold back the idcQ of the necessity of the 
new birth, or that you must not tell the people that there 
is a hell, while on the other hand you tell them there is a 
heaven. There never was a greater mistake. There is in 
every man's heart a judgment-seat. Yon come before 
that man : he knows he is a sinner, and there is no need 
of your trying to persuade him any thing else. You may 
please his ear by another story for a little while, but lie 
goes away despising you. That judgment scat, which is 
in every man's heart, is what you need to appeal t«>; and 
coining before an audience in that feeling and in that ap- 



Preaching to tub Masses. 



prestation, you will make them hear and make them feel. 
It is not A qne.-tion whether the)' like what you say or 
not: they will come again, and the more you disturb 
them tlic more certainly will they come again. Do not 
be afraid of such holy recklessness, or of driving people 
away from your church. Where one man goes because 
you tell the whole and the flat-footed truth, there will be 
h've men that will want his place. 

I think it is a capital idea to clean house once a year. 
The housekeepers in the spring know that for the health 
and beauty of their residence the place must be scrubbed, 
and scoured, and swept. Since I have been in the minis- 
try I have had the same idea in regard to the Church. I 
clean house about once a year; in other words, when I 
find "a certain class of men come to my preaching, and I 
find after long effort T cannot do them any good, I preach 
them out. I cleaned out fifteen families with one sermon 
in Philadelphia: they sent for their hymn books the next 
day. It was in the time of the oil speculation — they had 
gone into that speculation on what wxs called " the ground 
floor," but they had crawled out through the cellar. Was 
not my Church better for their removal ? It was a com- 
plete fumigation. If I find gathered in my church a great 
company of rum-sellers, I just try to preach to them of 
righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come. I 
talk to these men as much as I can ; I try to persuade 
them to quit their bad business; and if after a while I am 
not succeeding, I preach a sermon on some such text as, 
•' Woe to I 1 1 1 1 1 that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips," 
and I never see them in my church again. So I sometimes 
UW a class of merchants gathered in my church that I 
knew were not honest and upright, and I have tried in 
every possible way to inake them better. I kept on 
preaching honesty and uprightness in business, and not 



pREACUING TO THE MASSES. 



17 



succeeding, then I preached a sermon from the text, " As 
the partridge sitteth on eggs, and liatcheth them not; 60 
he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them 
in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool." 

I think it is the most dangerous thing in all the world, 
I cannot exaggerate the danger, for a minister of the Gos- 
pel to get bad people fixed and satisfied all around him. 
It will blast his soul and blast his ministry. If men wont 
accept the Gospel try somebody else; give a chance to 
other people. I say where one man goes oft" there will be 
five who will come, especially if the man who went off w as 
very mad, because he will talk round about and the people 
will hear it, and the)' will come to sec whether it is so. 

I advise you also, young gentlemen, in your effort to 
address the masses, to study tact in the presentation of 
Christian truth. If all the sermons that have been 
preached, and all the Christian effort thai flOfi been put 
forth for the salvation of the masses, had been successful, 
or had one fiftieth part of the influence which has been 
prayed for and which has been expected descended, the 
whole world before this would have seen the salvation of 
God. Every one of us who stands in the pulpit is aware 
of the fact that sometimes our most earnest effort fails for 
lack of tact and Christian strategy. A young minister 
came to an old minister and said, " I cannot get on ; I 
have been preaching now three years, and the people wont 
repent, and they wont believe, ami every thing seems to 
be a failure." The old minister said, "I will tell you 
what is the matter, John. You don't know how to fitm. 
I have watched you since you have been in the ministry ; 
you don't know how to fish. When a man gOtt out to 
fish he takes a beautiful pole, and he pitta on it a nice line, 
and puts on that a delicate hook, and he puts a beautiful 
fly on that, and then ho drops the fly very softly into the 



18 



Pkeachikg to the l\f asses. 



stream. That, is not the way you ti>h. When you go out 
lo preach you take for a polo a weaver's beam, tie on the 
end a cart rope, and put to the end of that a pot-hook, and 
then you bait it with a snapping turtle, and then you splash 
it into the stream, and you sa}', ; Bite, or be damned.' " 

It is amazing how men with but little mental faculty, 
and little mental furniture, may accomplish great things for 
God just by studying the best way of doing the thing, by 
exercising Christian tact and strategy. I never was more 
impressed with that than by the conduct of Mr. Osborn, 
an American evangelist. Perhaps none of you ever saw 
him. lie was an old man when I was a mere boy. lie 
came to my father's house, and I was the only one of the 
-ovhole family that was not a Christian. We sat down by 
the fireside in the evening in the country, and Mr. Osborn 
said to"" my father, "Are all your children Christians?" 
Father said, " Yes. all but I)c Witt." Well, the old evan- 
gelist, sitting by the fire, did not even turn toward me, but, 
looking into the tire, he began to tell {j^story about a lost 
laud) on a mountain, and it was a .-tunny night, very much 
like this, the wind blowing and howling around the house. 
He described the lost lamb out on the mountain, and how 
they tried to find it ; how every thing was warm in the 
sheepfold, and at last that lamb perished. It was all still 
in the room. Every body knew it meant me; I knew it 
meant me; but he did not say it meant me, and still kept 
looking into the tire. I never found any peace till I be- 
came a Christian. That is what I call Christian strategy. 
If he had turned to me after he got through and said, 
" De Witt, I mean you I " I should have been as mad us 
tire. 

Let us be cautious when wo coino to speak of the terrors 
of the law, and not preach as though we were glad to 
preach on that theme — not preach as though we wore glad 



Preaching to the Masses. 



19 



to have them perish if they kept on in their sins. Let 
there be something in the tone, something in the manner, 
which will represent to them the tact, " I am a sinner, too ; 
if God, by his infinite grace, had not changed my Loan, 
I should have been under the same condemnation." O 
how many there are who go forth to Christian work whose 
fingers are all thumbs! Men who are efficient, useful, and 
successful in worldly departments, just as soon as they 
touch the Christian service become awkward blunderers. 
A man was going home from a religious meeting, his heart 
having been all stirred up by the exercises. He had been 
told in that service that he must implore men to be saved 
wherever lie found them. As he was going along in the 
darkness, on a very lonely road through the woods, think-, 
ing to himself, ;i O that I could only find some one tirrtt I 
could invite to the Gospel, I would be very glad^ro do it," 
he met a man, and he said abruptly, " Are 'you ready to 
die?" The man fell on his knees, and cried out, " llerc 
is my purse, but spare my life ! " That was a mo.->t strik- 
ing illustration of inaptness in Christian work. 

Again: Use great naturalness of manner. Do not try 
to preach like any one else. See what you can do the 
easiest, and then do that. By that I do not mean to incul- 
cate laziness, or to put a premium upon any kind of indo- 
lence; but it is generally the case that that which yon can 
do easiest at the start, you can do the best and most suc- 
cessfully all the way through. In regard to preaching 
without notes — a subject which every man discUBSOS in tllid 
day who has any idea of the ministry — while it may be Di I 
for the majority of those who enter the ministry lo preach 
without notes, 1 think there are marked eases where it is 
not a man's duty so to do. I know men who have ruined 
their life time work by perpetual btrnggle to speak with- 
out notes. Though they hud large intellect and warm 



20 



Preaching to the Masses. 



Christian hearts, they never got facility in the extempo- 
raneous use of language. 

Let every man judge for himself the host way of preach- 
ing; hut he natural, and let it be an improved natural- 
ness. Why is it when men come to talk on religious themes 
they talk in a different tone and in a different way from 
that in which they talk on any other subject? I think 
we could reach the masses a good deal better if we had 
the naturalness of tone which we have in the street and 
shop. I do not know why there should be any such 
thing as a pulpit tone. It not only goes into the pulpit, 
but it goes into the pew — this disposition to act out a 
peculiar manner and a peculiar tone as fitted for relig- 
ious service. You will find n man who stands on Fri- 
day afternoon in his store on Broadway selling a hill of 
goods. lie wants to sell a bill of suspenders. Now he 
talks naturall} and persuasively. He says to the purchaser 
that these are really the best suspenders in all the city, 
and the customer buys them, saying, "What a delightful 
merchant this is ! Whore do you attend church? " " I at- 
tend such and such a church. We have a prayer-meeting 
to-night; wont you come around?" The customer says, 
" Yes." Well, Friday night he goes into the prayer-meet- 
ing, and the merchant who that afternoon had been talk- 
ing so cheerfully about the suspenders, and in such a suc- 
cessful way, stands up in the prayer-meeting to recom- 
mend the religion of Jesus Christ; but he talks in such a 
funereal tone, and in such a lugubrious manner, that it is 
enough to make an undertaker burst into tears. Now, why 
not have the same cheerfulness of tone in speaking of re- 
ligion as in speaking of secular matters? The religion of 
Jesus Christ is the brightest thing that ever came down 
from heaven. It is compared to sunlight, to flowers, and 
to all that is beautiful- and glorious. Why should wo, in 



Preaching to the Masses. 



21 



our manner and in our tones, indicate that it is any tiling 
else? We should certainly be as natural in the pulpit as 
in the street and in the home. 

I advise you also to go forth in the spirit of all prayer. 
Certainly you believe, we ought to believe, in the power of 
prayer. I have had within a few weeks some illustrations 
of what prayer can accomplish. One evening, at the 
close of our service, a father came into the side room, a 
man perhaps fifty years of age. lie burst aloud in grief, 
and said: "0, pray for my son!" Said I, "What is 
the matter with your son?" He replied, "He ran away 
from home." " Well," said I. " what do you want 1 " "I 
want him to come back." I said, "Are you a Christian?" 
"No." "The first thing," 'said I, "is to pray for your-.- 
self; you cannot pray for your son until you pray l'oi>your- 
self." So we began to pray. There were ejgtif or ten 
Christian people, ami 1 said: "Now let us pray that 
young man back. He must come back ; his father's 
heart is breaking ; we will pray him back just as certainly 
as we are here." So wo all knelt in prayer to God for 
the return of that son. That night that young man at the 
far West (Omaha) sat down and wrote to his father a letter 
of contrition, and resolved to come home, ami did come. 
The next Sabbath after the young man's arrival at home 
I mentioned the circumstance in the public serviee, and 
said: "There may be parents here who have lost sous. 
Would you like your son to come bach j Pray him back. 
Do you say, ' My son has been gone so long he wont come/ 
He will; 1 know he will." 1 told them this ease in all 
its particulars. "Now," I said, "you pray to Coil for 
the return of your wayward BOn and he will certainly 
come." There was in my congregation a Christian man 
whose soli had been gone fourteen years. He had not 
heard one word from him since ho loll his father's houso. 



Preaching" to tjie Masses. 



The father bad often told me lie did not know where his 
son was— whether in China, or California, or elsewhere. 
But the night that I mentioned the return of the prodigal 
m Omaha, the father and mother of the last-mentioned 
prodigal made especial petition for their son. Next day 
the father got a telegram from his son in San Francisco, 
California, asking if he might come home. Imagine, if 
.you ean, the gladness of that father's house in Brooklyn. 
Does God hear prayer j Where is Tyndall now ? [I never 
preacli from notes, and so I feel bothered with this memo- 
randum. I have enough on it to preach three weeks from, 
but 1 will just stop now.] 

Mule every service decisive fur eternity. If you preach 
to the masses, the people will come in to one scrviee and 
they will never come back again. It is an awful thing to 
btand in the pulpit and feel, "Nowhere is an audience, 
some of whom 1 will never meet until the thunders of the 
last day break on the world; if I do not touch them to- 
night they will never be touched." Just as certainly as 
you go into a service before the masses and resolve that 
there and then souls shall be saved, they will be saved. 
There will he no experiment about it. Now just single 
out one man. I think it is a grand thing to single out a 
man in the audience and preach to him. My custom is to 
single out a man mi the last scat in the gallery— I mean in 
that line, or standing clear out by the door— for the reason 
that 1 have noticed J can make all the people hear between 
that point and this. I like everybody to hear in the church, 
and if I preach to the last man in the gallery I am pretty 
certain they will all hear me. 1 take a man far back ; I im- 
agine to myself that that man has never been in the church 
belore, or has not been in a church for twenty years and 
perhaps he will never he in again ; he may come from 
curiosity; this i., my last chance; the Lord help me | 



Preaching to the Masses. 



Then I think of what that man's soul is worth. What is 
a soul? Why, it is enough to break a minister down in 
the midst of his sermon to think of what a suiil is. A 
wheel within a wheel, wound up for endless revolutions ; 
a realm in which love shall forever lift its smile, or despair 
gnash its teeth, or pain strike its poignard, or hope kindle 
its auroras : a soul just poised on the pivot, and if it swing 
off or break away the lightnings of heaven have no! feet 
swift enough to catch up with it. No wonder that many 
a man in his last moment has awakened lo think he had 
a soul and was not prepared to go, and in the excitement 
of the moment ran his lingers through his hair, and then, 
though a minute before he lay helpless on the bed from 
disease, not able to turn his head, in the anguish of the 
moment rose up and shook oil' the three watcher; and 
looked out into the darkness and cried, " O my soul, my 
auul, my soul ! " Now to have fifty such souls or twenty 
such souls in the audience, and to feel that this is the only 
chance at those souls: it is awful. It seems to me it is 
like empaneling a jury for a trial. 

When I was studying law I used to be a great deal in 
the court-house, and after the witnesses had all been ques- 
tioned, and the counsel hud made the argument on both 
sides, and the judge had given his charge, ami the jury 
had retired and been out for a lew hours and then came 
in, the clerk of the court would say, "Gentlemen of the 
jury, have you agreed on your verdict?" "We have." 
" Who will speak lor you?" " The foreman." The clerk 
would say, <s Foreman, do you find the deiendanl guilty 
or not guilty?" The instant between the question of the 
clerk and the answer of the foreman was (he most intense 
moment in. all the history of the court-house. Well, now, 
it seems when a minister is coining toward the close of his 
sermon when he is preaching to the masses, here is a jury 




24 PnKACiiiN<.LT<> the Masses. 

empaneled, nut twelve men, but hundreds and thousands 
of men. They are all empaneled ; the witnesses have all 
been subpoenaed ; the miuistering angel, the Holy Ghost, 
the world, the flesh, and the devil — witnesses on both sides 
— they have all testified ; the argument has been made on 
both sides. Satan has pleaded on one side, Christ has 
pleaded on the other, and our Advoeate with the Father 
has pleaded for the soul. Tlie verdict is to be rendered, 
the Judge of quick and dead has given the charge, the 
minister has now come to the close of his sermon, and they 
are to render the verdict, not about somebody else, but 
about themselves. What an overwhelming consideration! 

1 wish you great joy, young men. Great fields are 
opening for yon. lie praying men ; be holy men. Re- 
men, her that you can never lift your people higher up than 
the place on which you stand. Consecrate yourself, body, 
mind, and son!, to God. Have high anticipations in the 
ministry. There are great solemnities, great trials, and 
great hardships; but where there is one hardship there are 
five hundred compensations in the inward consciousness of 
doing the Lord's service. 1 KUOW a great many things 
arc written in books this day about the hardships and the 
trials of the ministry, and they are all true. O for some- 
body to write a good, vivacious, enthusiastic, Christian 
book about the joys of the Christian ministry ! I have not 
wanted to make any thing I say to-night personal ; I have 
not wanted to say any thing about myself; but I will tell 
you before I quit, the ministry to me is one long exhilara- 
tion. I believe 1 should have been dead if I had been en- 
gaged in any thing else than in preaching the Gospel of 
the grace of God. It is healthy ; it is good for the body, 
it is good fur the mind, and it is good fur the soul. 




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